Under a President Hillary Clinton, however, that Third World War would have been an all-too-possible – even likely – scenario. She would have continued the policy of the Obama administration in which she served. That comprised ineffectual posturing against the Russians, alternately placing sanctions on them (over Ukraine and Crimea) and then trying to negotiate and cooperate with them instead (over Syria), neither to much effect.

America’s relations with the world’s other nuclear superpower matters, and the whole world needs someone who can make them work. Trump was always much more likely to do that than Clinton, and that realisation played some role in his victory.

America doesn’t want a scrap with Russia. Clinton would have ramped up the rhetoric, laid down the ultimatums, issued the demands. Either she would have ended up in some sort of confrontation, probably fought by proxy by hapless others, or else suffered a humiliating climbdown, a re-run of the Cuban missile crisis but with a much less happy ending. There was also that outside chance of mutually assured destruction of Planet Earth. That’s now evaporated, and that’s why we can breathe a sigh of relief.

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Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

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Jerusalem, Israel

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Baghdad, Iraq

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Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories

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Tokyo, Japan

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Mexico City, Mexico

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So, Trump the Peacemaker? Why not? Diplomacy, despite appearances, is about more than platitudes and polite cocktail parties. It is about identifying vital national interests and pursuing them. It is about doing deals.

Even Donald Trump’s worst enemy (and there is some stiff competition for that accolade) would concede that he is a deal maker. He enjoys a deal. He is none too fussy about who he deals with, either.

Which brings us to Vladimir Putin. The importance of personal political chemistry is often overstated in international affairs, but it has a role.

Plainly, there are some intriguing parallels between the President-elect of the United States and the President of the Russian Federation. Both men lead nations that are concerned about economic failure and a perceived loss of prestige. President Putin never ran on the slogan “Make Russia Great Again”, but he might as well have. Both are oddly thin-skinned and surprisingly sensitive to slights, personal and national. Both have a self-image of being tough realists.

What’s more important right now, however, is that both agree that Isis is a greater threat to both their nations than they are to each other. Trump seems content to allow Russia to pursue its own interests, in its own way, if it leaves America alone. The feeling is mutual. It might be too strong to suggest America and Russia forming some kind of strategic partnership, but it is no longer as outlandish an idea as it might have seemed even a few months ago.

Putin: Russia ready to restore US relations after Trump win

To borrow a phrase of Margaret Thatcher’s about Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin is a man Donald Trump can do business with. Secretary Clinton wasn’t able to get along with Vladimir, personally or politically. That’s the point and that’s the difference.

Trump is no dove, but he is no warmonger either. He will smite America’s avowed enemies, especially militant Islamist terrorism, but he will not start “wars of choice”. He wants to look after America’s veterans, not create many more of them. He recognises that America is war weary.

This is not new: before 9/11 and the adventure in Iraq changed everything, George W Bush was elected on an “America First” policy, a reaction to Bill Clinton’s interventions in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia and the Middle East. It is, similarly, one reason why Barack Obama succeeded George W Bush, after that disastrous war of choice in Iraq yielded no discernible benefit to anyone.

There has always been a tussle between America’s conceptions of her national interests being pursued in a global role, whether protecting the world from communism or intervening in humanitarian wars, and the much older tradition of isolationism. A century ago Woodrow Wilson wanted America to guarantee the borders of Europe after the Great War, with an explicitly moralistic agenda attached. His ambitions came to nothing, but after 1945 they were fulfilled, big time. There is scarcely a plot of land on Earth where Americans haven’t died or stood guard to defend other people.

Is the tide turning back to isolationism? A new kind of Pax Americana?

Some decades ago President Kennedy declared that his nation would “pay any price, bear any burden” to defend freedom anywhere in the world. As Donald Trump might quip: “Not true any more.” America has neither the money nor the will to play the global cop.

When Trump suggested during the campaign that America’s European allies could do more to pay for their own defence, it caused a furore. Europeans could not believe anyone would question the Atlantic alliance. It was the same resentful, spiteful sense of entitlement that has propelled Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel to lace their “congratulations” to Donald Trump with poisonous insult. They really don’t like this supposedly uncouth guy. Tough.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes

1/18
On Mexicans

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.”

AFP/Getty Images

2/18
On Senator McCain

“He’s not a war hero... He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

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3/18
On Megyn Kelly

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”

AFP/Getty Images

4/18
On Vladimir Putin

“He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.”

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5/18
On his popularity

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

AFP/Getty Images

6/18
On torture

"I would bring back waterboarding and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

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7/18
On his body

“Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Republican rival Marco Rubio] referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

AFP/Getty Images

8/18
On president Obama

“He is the founder of Isis.”

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9/18
On the Second Amendment

"Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

AFP/Getty Images

10/18
On Hilary Clinton's emails

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

AFP/Getty Images

11/18
On sexual assault

In a statement regarding the release of a 2005 video in which he can be heard boasting about sexual assault:
“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course.”

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12/18
On tax loopholes

"I absolutely used it, and so did Warren Buffett, and so did George Soros and so did many people who Hillary is getting money from."

AFP/Getty Images

13/18
On his accuser

“Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.”

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14/18
On Hillary Clinton

“Such a nasty woman”

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15/18
On his pro-life stance

“Based on what she's saying ... you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day, and that's unacceptable”

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16/18
On his accusers

"Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

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17/18
On the 'rigged' election system

“I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.”

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18/18
On Hillary Clinton

“I hate to say it but if I win I'm going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, so much deception. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

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They, or more likely their successors, will have to deal with him with respect and with gratitude for all America has done to deliver and guarantee their freedom so many times. It is not unreasonable for Nato allies to be asked to pay their subs if America is asked to risk shedding its blood (again) in return. Crucially, if Europe wants Putin to keep his paws off the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe, then Europeans will have to be a bit more responsible and respectful to The Donald.

The contempt that many in Europe hold for America is as bottomless as it is unfathomable. It will not serve Europe, that is the European Union, well. It will, as an interesting side-effect, only make Trump even better disposed to the post-Brexit UK. Every cloud, eh?

Trump the Peacemaker, we must hope, will be inclined to do some unlikely deals elsewhere. In Pyongyang, for example. I doubt whether Kim Jong-un is much bothered about Trump’s “locker room talk”, attitude to personal taxation or anything else he may have done. On the “Nixon Goes to China” principle, Trump might also be intrigued by the possibility of pulling off the ultimate deal with the hermit king of North Korea.

In Tehran, in Beijing, in Havana, in Ankara, in Riyadh, in Tel Aviv, there are hard-nosed men (usually), friends and foes alike, waiting to do business with him on the right terms. Drained of any ethical content – and we will have to face up to that unpleasant fact – American foreign policy will be about the pursuit of the American national interest, which usually in fact means peace.

Trump the Peacemaker? He is not a neo-con, attempting to create beacons of Western values in Afghanistan or Iraq. He is not an ideological Cold Warrior, like Ronald Reagan. As Hillary Clinton has graciously and bravely pleaded, give Trump a chance to lead.